Thursday, March 20, 2014

Target is America's third-largest retailer. It is also as staunchly anti-union as they come. In 2011, we showed you the cheesy anti-union video all Target employees were shown. We now bring you the new cheesy anti-union video all Target employees must endure.

The
existence of Target's new anti-union employee training video (entitled
"Think Hard: Protect Your Signature") was first reported today by Josh Eidelson at Salon.
And we have obtained the actual video, which is above. It features Dawn
and Ricardo, a cool, knowing, multiracial pair of Target employees who
are here to talk to you, the Target team member, about the dangers of
unions. "Someday, someone you don't know may approach you at work, or
visit you at home, asking you to sign your name to an authorization
card, petition, or some other union document," Ricardo warns.

Stranger danger!

"At Target,
an open door policy isn't just a catchphrase," clarifies Dawn, in her
smirky, Rachel Maddow-esque way. "It's a policy." She's referring to the
sort of policy that caused a former Target manager to tell us, of the store's HR policies, "on paper it sounds great but the reality is a horror story."

"Unions
want what we have" the video declares. How so? Ricardo explains, as if
speaking to a child: "We're a target, because unions are threatened by
us. And here's why: when we take business away from retailers that are
unionized, those companies may downsize, reducing the number of
employees. And that means the union loses members, which is a big
problem for the union business. Did you notice how I just called it a
business? Because that's what it is."

Target, which posted $73.3 billion in revenues in 2012, is presumably not a "business." Businesses sound bad.

Listening to this video, I'm struck by how much Target doesn't really trash the unions, but attempts to compare the unions as a business that is only interested in building membership and collecting dues--but not doing anything else. There was a lot of corporate propaganda Target presented in a fast-paced manner that I had trouble to process, and keep straight. I would imagine a young, new, Target employee would be instilled with fear that the big, bad unions would take away their wages, their jobs, or even Target's business. Besides, unions are not needed, because the federal government take care of everything that the unions used to take care of. So the new Target employee doesn't look into joining the union, or is afraid to be fired by management for talking about unions. Target continues its successful anti-union crusade.